Thousands of fans will take their teal-colored seats on Saturday to watch a historic soccer match on Kansas City’s Berkley Riverfront.
The Kansas City Current’s season-opening game against the Portland Thorns will also be the inaugural match for CPKC Stadium, the first arena specifically built for a women’s professional sports team anywhere in the world.
“We’re all excited about the new stadium,” said Current head coach Vlatko Andonovski, the former leader of the U.S. Women’s National Team. “We’re all excited about this historic moment. We’re proud that we’re part of this.”
The game kicks off at 12 p.m. CT. Find KCUR’s guide to watching Current games here.
Saturday marks a big step for the league. Even as the National Women’s Soccer League has gained fans and leveraged public interest into a $60 million TV rights deal last year, teams often have to shape their schedules around the Major League Soccer or college sports teams whose stadiums they share.
“Women's teams have only ever been able to play in kind of the leftover stadiums of men's teams or stadiums that have been abandoned,” Current fan Rachel Pierce, who serves as communications director for the Downtown Neighborhood Association, told KCUR’s Up To Date. “It's high time that we have our own.”
The San Diego Wave, which finished at the top of the league standings in 2023, played several of their home games at Snapdragon Stadium with the yard lines and logo of San Diego State University’s football team still clearly visible on the field.
The Chicago Red Stars, despite representing a city with robust public transit, play at a suburban stadium that’s difficult to reach without a car.
The Current’s players are keenly aware of CPKC Stadium’s historical significance. The team’s NWSL predecessor, FC KC, played its first game on a high school football field in Overland Park, back in 2013.
“To be in the league when it began, and to have to get dressed in my car…we have certainly come a long way,” said Current midfielder Desiree Scott, a member of the original FC KC team, in a recent Instagram post from the team.
Their new digs are a far cry from changing in the car — Current players got their first glimpse of the new locker room earlier this week.
“To just have our own space, something’s that ours and, to walk in, it’s a sense of pride,” said forward Kristen Hamilton. “Something that we are going to cherish for years to come, and hopefully make a lot of memories.”
Saturday’s game will have many echoes of the first FC KC game. The Current will take on the Thorns, as they did on that Overland Park field in 2013. Becky Sauerbrunn, who played with Scott on FC KC, will be on the field again as a defender for Portland.
Fans are excited, too. Season ticket holders got to walk around the stadium at a special preview a week before the game, checking out some of the local food vendors — which include Joe’s Kansas City BBQ, Waldo Thai and Yoli Tortilleria — and scoping out the views.
Among those who got an early look were Karly Caylor and their partner. They were season ticket holders last year, which gave the pair priority for season-long packages this year.
“They handed out these commemorative tickets and this came with this little card that said like, ‘Congratulations on being the first season ticket members for these seats in the inaugural season,’ which just felt really cool,” Caylor said. “We were the first people to sit in those seats because it's a brand new stadium. And so that kind of made it feel a little bit more personal.”
The Caylors plan to bike to CPKC Stadium from their home two miles away in the Historic Northeast, so they’ll avoid parking altogether.
Other fans were frustrated by how the team communicated about parking options. The Current told season ticket holders that they could purchase a season-long parking pass for nearly $1,000, but did not initially communicate parking alternatives.
The team has since followed up with more comprehensive information about transportation options, which will include free team shuttles from the River Market and downtown. The KC Streetcar’s riverfront extension, a major selling point of the downtown stadium, just broke ground earlier this month, and likely won’t be able to transport fans until the 2026 season.
The team also announced that fans cannot tailgate in the team’s parking lots this season because of concerns about the limited space.
In response, the Downtown Neighborhood Association organized a “walking tailgate” from the River Market along the Riverfront Heritage Trail. Fans will meet at 10:30 a.m. at the Town of Kansas Bridge to walk the 25 or so minutes to the stadium entrance.
Pierce, who first bought season tickets last year, said the new stadium makes a statement.
“It’s amazing that the Current get to right what I feel is a wrong of the world — that there hasn’t been a stadium just for women,” Pierce said. “It's been a long time coming.”
Many of the Current’s diehard fans have witnessed the team’s evolution firsthand. The Blue Crew, the team’s official supporter group, got its name from the colors of the original FC KC.
When the team was revived as the Current, the Blue Crew added an official drumline, Surface Tension.
Carrie Epperson, a North Kansas City high school band director, leads Surface Tension and has been a fan of the Current since its inaugural season. Epperson got to see the stadium a few times before opening day.
“Getting to watch it being built from the ground up is, it just makes me feel very elated to have something here in Kansas City that's going to be a permanent part of the skyline,” she said. “A lot of people have worked so hard for this to happen – just, one, to get a team in Kansas City, but then to build them something that's their own.”
Come Saturday, Epperson will be sitting right behind the Portland Thorns’ goal — where the drumline will be loudly doing their best to distract the keeper.
Greg Echlin and Savannah Hawley-Bates contributed reporting.
